The DOJ spent five years building an airtight case proving Google has an illegal search monopoly. Their solution? Force Google to share query data with Bing and DuckDuckGo. It's like catching someone cheating at poker and making them show their cards to other players who still can't afford the table stakes.
Here's what the judge actually ordered:
Data sharing requirements: Google must provide anonymized search query data and results to competitors. Microsoft will get access to the same search signals that make Google's results relevant. Cool, except Google's advantage isn't the data - it's the 25 years of infrastructure and machine learning models that make sense of that data.
No exclusive search deals: Google can't pay Apple $20 billion annually to be Safari's default search engine anymore. This actually matters, since that deal locked up 36% of US mobile search traffic. Apple's probably already on the phone with Microsoft negotiating their own sweetheart deal.
Chrome and Android stay put: The judge rejected DOJ's breakup proposal, citing "competitive pressures from AI chatbots." Apparently ChatGPT competing for search queries convinced her that Google's monopoly is already under threat. That's like saying Uber doesn't have a taxi monopoly because helicopters exist.
The real problem nobody's talking about: I've worked on sites that break when Chrome auto-updates. Google controls 67% of browser market share and uses Chrome to push web standards that favor their products. They killed third-party cookies, gimped ad blockers, and force websites to implement their AMP standard. Keeping Chrome is keeping the gun.
The tech details matter here. Google's search monopoly isn't just about query volume - it's about owning the entire search stack:
- Chrome sends user behavior data back to Google Search
- Android defaults to Google Search and shares location data
- Google Analytics tracks users across 85% of websites
- AdWords creates a closed loop where search ads fund more search improvements
Sharing anonymized query data misses the point entirely. It's like giving competitors access to a library after you've already read all the books and built the Dewey Decimal System.
What actually happens next: Microsoft integrates Google's search data into Bing, users still choose Google 92% of the time because the results are better, and we're back where we started in 18 months. Meanwhile, Google's lawyers are already appealing this ruling to the Supreme Court.
The judge specifically mentioned AI competition as a reason to avoid breakup. That's backwards logic. Google's using search monopoly profits to fund Gemini development, creating another monopoly in AI. We're not preventing future monopolies - we're subsidizing them.